Hello Boomers! This time I'm going to talk to BP. Maybe BP will listen, maybe not. I guess we'll see. With the failure of the Top Kill procedure that was discussed in my last two diaries, now we're moving on to what BP is calling the LMRP. Lower Marine Riser Package. If you've read my stuff up to now, you know that I've been pretty pessimistic. I've mostly made negative predictions. This ain't going to work and here's why. That's going to be a complete fucking failure because taadaaa taadaaa taadaaa.
Fishgrease = Debbie Downer
I mean, I've been largely right about stuff. Look where we are now! I've told some DKos Boomers my prediction trick. It's an illusion, just like a Sigfried and Roy do, only I do it without tigers and I'm generally a little more ummmm... butch about it.
Let's jump through the flaming hoop and I'll continue on the other side.
The trick is, everything involved with stopping this well before the kill bores (sometimes called relief wells, which they're not) are complete, fails. Stopping this well shy of a kill bore is doomed to failure. This was pretty plain to me and a lot of other people who know stuff about the oilfield in a magical Sigfried and Roy sort of way. So if you know everything isn't going to work, you just have to develop a plausible list of reasons for that failure, scattergun fashion, and one of them will end up true and you look like a friggin genius. Nothing mystical or even that analytical. Just a general knowledge of formation-pressured wells and equipment.
Okay. One more trick. Pick a card, Boomer. Any card.
Got it? Don't show it to me.
Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Gotcha.
See, this trick is just like the "Pull My Finger" trick only I do it with cards instead of my finger. ---Pauses For Laughter--- That's actually a better trick than the "Divine BP's Next Fuckup" trick. Took me longer to come up with it, anyway.
Where the hell was I? Oh yeah. This time I'm going to try a little optimism because lets face it, all the bad news is bumming us out. So I'm going to predict something besides utter failure.
Fishgrease = Little Mary Fucking Sunshine
There's a catch. BP has to change their entire culture. You listening, BP? Get your mind off of drilling. You are no longer drilling this well. Look down there. See any pipe turning? You circulating? I don't mean on the kill bores. They're drilling -- or one of them is. This well, the leaking well, is no longer in its Drilling Phase. It is in its Goddamned Leaking Phase. If you want to recover that leaking oil instead of allowing it to flow into the Gulf of Mexico, you'll actually be entering a Production Phase. I know you concentrate on drilling because drilling and exploration keep your stock price up there and make your shareholders happy, but you're not drilling now. You're producing. You don't want to be. You'd give just about any fucking thing not to be. But you are producing this well. What's that mean? It means you open a separate War Room, just for this oil recovery operation and you kick the drilling people out. Sign on the door: NO DRILLING HANDS.
You don't have to kick the scientists out. Just hand them an Etch-A-Sketch®, tell them it's a LMRP-CONSTRUCT-FROTHULATOR and they'll be happy as non-oil-soaked clams. What we want in the War Room for this project are production hands. Production Operation. Production Hands. The Drill Ship is now a Production Ship. Any of your executives who concentrate on drilling or geology? You know, Biff and Lance and Bruce? The fucking golfers? They go. Kick them out too. And what are we calling this? LMRP Cap? NOT FAIR! The drilling guys got swell names like Junk Shot and Top Kill!
(Top Kill was like Top Gun minus the beach volleyball scene that Sigfried and Roy liked so much)
Now that it's a production operation, you call it the Lower Marine Riser Package! No! Us production guys get a cool name too! From now on this operation is called...
Money Shot!
And for good reason. Because BP, you're going to collect all this oil, 20,000 BOPD or 45,000 BOPD or whatever and you're going to take tankers of it to port and you're going to sell it for MORE than the going price because this is special fucking oil. And then you're going to take every last dime of that money and you're going to give it to unemployed fishermen in Louisiana. THEN you're going to take the full value of ALL your production in the Gulf of Mexico and all your production from everywhere else in the United States of America, for the entire duration of this leaking fucking well and you're going to give it to GreenPeace and unemployed fishermen and the folks who clean the birds and unemployed hotel workers and everybody else you've put out of a job with your criminal goddamned greed and incompetence. You're going to walk through those towns along the Gulf and ask people if they're employed and if they say no, you're going to hand them a fat wad of cash. Money Shot!
YOU PAY ALL COSTS -- DISTRIBUTE THE FULL DOLLAR AMOUNT OF THE PRODUCTION AND DON'T YOU DARE SCHEDULE PLANT TURNAROUNDS OR SHUT WELLS IN -- MONEY SHOT!!!
Technical Aspects of Money Shot
We don't need the scientists because this shit is easy. This is just a production problem and ALL production problems are solvable. To start with, since I can't really tell from the cartoons on your web site,
It sure looks like the upper portion of a BOP... a drilling apparatus. Is that some shortcut your graphics guy did or is that actually a piece of drilling equipment hung on pipe above the sea-floor in this production operation? There's no rams, thank God, just the annular preventer. What else? Some slips, maybe? A hanger of some sort? It's okay! I know you need a means of having an inner production pipe and an annulus for the hot water. Just saying that if it was a drilling idea, make it the last one. And add a bleed manifold fairly close to the cap if you haven't already. The way to do this is have that bleed valve wide open (bleeding all the oil into the surrounding water) when you stab the cap onto the cutoff riser. Save your fragile packing seal there. Then you can slowly increase your rate upstairs by slowly closing the bleed. Throttle through a valve that can take it, rather than packing that cannot. It's all going to the same place -- into the Gulf. Same damned thing you SHOULD have done with the riser insertion tool. Forgive me if you've already thought of this shit. Watching you so far, I don't just assume you've thought of common-sense production ideas like that. And topside? If you've a choke or control valve up there, upstream of your separation, fine. But start with it wide open and only close it if you have to. You're controlling flow at the source by bleeding it out a valve instead of blowing your packing out. And for separation, go big. Big and low pressure. Retention time. Big, great fucking big slug catcher. No baffles or screens or any of that horse shit. Minimize backpressure. That's the name of the game, BP.
And look. I know you're going to pump a bunch of methanol. Good idea. But methanol doesn't touch paraffin. Nothing you can inject will. HOT WATER down that annulus. HOT. Not warm Gulf surface water. HOT water. Get a big line heater and turn it into a water heater and get that shit to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Celsius? I don't know. This is the United States of America. Keep your metric bullshit in the North Sea. When you were having problems at the end of the run through that riser insertion tool setup, was that paraffin? HOT WATER! HOT! And insulate the outside pipe. Nothing fancy. Any fabric that will hold a little dead-water space will work fine. Just a little something to hold the temperature. With water that hot be ready for plenty of thermal expansion of your pipe string. Yards of it. Not feet or inches.
With that much methanol on a boat up there, be careful. Basic safety. You've seen a methanol fire... well you've seen the heat waves, right? Because you can't actually see methanol burn, which is why it's such a bitch. Don't lose your operation because of something simple and stupid. Keep it tight. Keep a bind on the day-to-day shit because you know as well as I do that stuff will bite you in the ass just as badly as the exotic stuff. This is just a production problem. Keep it simple and keep it safe.
Money Shot can work, BP. Don't let anyone hurry you to get full flow. Don't let anyone worry you if you need to shut down for a bit and reconfigure. You'll probably need to make incremental changes to get Money Shot working at full potential. We understand that. We want it to work. We want it to work great. Hurricane? Bail for a few days. Anybody bitches about it, let me know. I'll handle it.
Now quit reading a liberal blog, BP and let's fucking get after it. Let's produce this well.
BP, you're dismissed. Boomers, fix my tags.
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